Kill switch
In brief
The button that shuts down the service remotely. If the technology you’re using is controlled by someone else, they might decide one morning to cut it off, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
▶ Precise definition
The ability of a third party (supplier, parent company, country of origin) to suspend, restrict or interrupt access to a service or technology, by virtue of a technical, commercial or regulatory decision. This is the blind spot in most analyses of sovereignty: a compliant contract does not prevent a service from being cut off if the technology and its operation remain under foreign control.
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